


The Long Way Home

by space_oddity_75



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, aftermath of a trauma, mad-in-a-coma-or-back-in-time?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/space_oddity_75/pseuds/space_oddity_75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sort of alternative ending for 2.08, with Angst. <br/>This fic was originally written for the LoM Ficathon 2007; the original prompt was 'Sam & Maya, 2007, Sam cooks'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Way Home

_“Fight for what you want / you’ve got to take care_  
Look after your sisters and brothers / it’s such a small world  
They keep saying / such a small world  
But it’s enough to feel lost / and wander without love  
Think without a heart and / survive without a soul...”  
[Elisa – ‘City Lights’] 

 

 

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

How do you know you're still alive, Sam Tyler?

Your life is just a mechanical succession of breaths, a string of useless actions carried out one after the other, in an endless game of mundane tasks and hollow heartbeats. Is that enough for you? 

Or is life worth living only if you can have _something more_? 

Joy, pain, passions, feelings... How important are they in this game? How important are they _to you_?

Are you strong enough, Sam Tyler? 

Can you play the game?

***

The hardest part of your return to life is realising you’re a different man now.

Your old self was an ambitious suit-clad arsehole who lived for rules and regulations, his ego bursting with the pride he felt in being a modern lawman with an irreprehensible code of conduct. 

He liked everything to be neatly lined up, categorized and filed away. Feelings were no exception: difficult to manage as they were, they needed to be restrained, relegated where they couldn’t harm or distract him from his career. Bottling up his emotions eventually became as natural as breathing.

But suddenly, his ivory tower crumbled and a new scenario burst into life from the dark recesses of his mind, turning everything upside down. Drowning him in his own feelings. 

Your old self died slowly and painfully, locked up in a prison of his own device, a new man emerging from his ashes.

***

The human brain is a mystery, a labyrinth no-one has yet been able to explore completely, and you got lost in yours for a long time, unable to find a way out.

Until one day, the new you managed to claw his way back to reality. 

Waking up from your dream, you realise none of the things you thought were important seem to matter anymore. Everything you longed for feels distant and hollow, and you almost can’t believe you’ve fought so hard to come back to this nothingness.

You’re finally home, DCI Sam Tyler, but your perfect life is shattered.

***

_“Look at yourself! You’re as wrapped up in red tape as a bloody christmas present, Samantha”_ , Gene Hunt would have said. But then again, he was just a figment of your imagination, the product of your sick mind, wasn’t he? And in spite of this, he felt more real to you than any of your actual colleagues ever did.

Your therapist says it will take some time before you come to terms with the fact that 1973 existed only in your mind. Whilst you’ve managed to recover quite well from your physical injuries, emotionally you are still very weak.

Deep down inside, you feel suspended in a sort of limbo and hate your brain for playing such tricks on you. No matter what you do, you can’t stop thinking about _them_. 

All the people you have loved and lost. All the people you have betrayed. 

Or have you?

Still, those memories are so clear, those nightmares so vivid.

Sometimes, you wish you could click your fingers and be able to go back and forth from your dreamworld to reality upon request, but the rational part of you knows you are stuck here.

You can’t have the best of both worlds.

***

For months, you feel as if you were watching your life from the outside, a mere spectator of your own existence. You behave like an automaton, a puppet without strings.

Your life is totally out of sync.

Until one day you can’t stand it anymore. You realise something important is missing, something you can’t live without, and run out of the meeting room as if it were on fire. 

The roof of the CID brings back memories of a different world, of soft warm hands and clear blue eyes begging you to stay and live your illusion. 

You shut your eyes for a brief moment, while your heart starts pumping faster. The chilly afternoon air hits your lungs and the wind ruffles your hair.

This is the moment when everything changes, Sam. You’re walking on the edge of your existence: will you jump forward into your dream, or step back and embrace reality?

Toss the coin, make your choice. It’s up to you.

You take a deep breath and walk on until you reach the railing.

***

Your head is spinning, but you try to concentrate, letting your eyes wander along the modern buildings of the Mancunian skyline, towards the city bursting with life under the overcast sky.

There’s a noise a few steps behind you, but you don’t turn back for fear it may be just another illusion.

But Maya is no illusion this time. She’s very much real instead, and fairly worried about your presence up here. She may no longer live in your direct shadow, but she can still sense when there’s something wrong with you, even from a distance.

She spots you on the far side of the roof, leaning on the protective railing with your hands gripping the bar. Approaching carefully, she tentatively touches your elbow. 

At first, you barely acknowledge her presence, but then your posture changes and you take a sideways look at her, an unreadable expression on your face. Your eyes sparkle for a brief moment, but you don't say a word and your gaze soon returns to the distant skyline. 

Sighing, she looks at you with a mixture of concern and sorrow. She bites her lower lip, probably wondering why she always manages to fall for stubborn, complicated men. 

The wind is blowing stronger now, and she appears to suppress a shiver. She's only wearing a light blouse, similar to the bloodstained one that has haunted your dreams for such a long time. Her silky black hair is dancing around her face and she constantly needs to push it back with a hand to keep it out of her eyes.

Leaning with your forearms on the railing, you try to calm down and inspect your bloodied finger. The cut is only superficial, no harm done. With an instinctive gesture, you put it in your mouth.   
The blood tastes distinctively like copper and you’re almost relieved to be able to feel how much the cut stings.

When Maya lays a gentle hand upon your shoulder, you almost shiver at the touch. She hesitates for a second, but doesn’t pull back. 

Her silent presence is somewhat comforting.

You’re both survivors, somehow, and you’ve both changed. Your relationship needs to find new bearings, now: you no longer know each other emotionally and this puts her in an awkward place. But she’s not giving up on you. Not again.

When you were in a coma, she used to walk into your hospital room every day not knowing if you'd live or die. She could barely stand to look at you, lying helpless and pale, only kept alive by a myriad of beeping machines. It just hurt too much. After a while, she stopped coming to see you at all, for fear of walking in one morning to find just an empty bed.

While you were dreaming of 1973, she was left alone to pick up the pieces of a dead relationship with a man in a coma and deal with the aftermath of her own kidnapping, which had left her more psychologically traumatized than she’d ever imagined. 

You weren’t there when she needed you the most, but she survived. Her inner scars will never disappear, she knows that very well, but she’s trying hard to forget how deep they are.

She’s always been a fighter, your Maya. Only, she isn’t yours anymore, and nobody knows what might have happened between you two if things had gone differently, if you’d trusted her instincts from the beginning and backed her up during that fateful investigation on Colin Raimes instead of locking yourself up in your ivory tower.

You suddenly realise your legs have turned to jelly, so you turn around and slide down to sit against the railing. She remains standing, her mind briefly wandering of its own accord as she looks down at the city buildings. 

If you had paid more attention, you could have seen her eyes briefly glisten with unshed tears as she remembered the time she came up here too, no more than a few months ago, wondering whether five floors would be enough to end her desperate existence without risking to survive the fall. 

But you are oblivious to your surroundings, your mind still in a whirlwind.

She crouches down and looks at you with genuine sympathy. There’s no need for words, she knows what’s going on. 

When she raises one hand to move a strand of long hair away from her face, you meet her deep brown eyes and there’s a brief sparkle in your heart. It’s the rememberance of happiness past, a raw feeling of belonging and wordless understanding. The full flavour and scent of Maya, exploding within your senses just for a brief second.

Is she the key to it all? And can you trust that short-lived sparkle to re-ignite your cold heart and get your bloodstream in motion again?

She offers you her hand and helps you up, steadying you gently before pulling you into a loose embrace, from which you soon disentagle, looking away. 

She knows that you’re embarassed, that you hate feeling so exposed, but she forces you to face your problems nevertheless. She’s wordlessly asking you not to escape any further than you’ve already done. Not to harm yourself any longer. 

That’s the exact moment when you realise your choice has already been made.

In your fragile new world, salvation has brown eyes.

***

You finally get back into the CID building, but you still look distraught, so she offers to drive you home and make sure you take your time to rest.

Fending off the puzzled looks from your colleagues, she swiftly excuses herself and drags you away from the police station without giving anyone the chance to comment on your disappearance. 

She’s still as strong and determined as she used to be when you worked together, and you can’t help but smile at the memory. Your heart tells you she won’t say anything to anybody about what happened on the roof today. She’ll be the only one to share your secret, and there’s nobody more trustworthy than her.

Before taking you back, she wants to stop at her flat to get a jacket, and she takes the chance to invite you in for a drink. After a few minutes, the invitation has switched to a full dinner at her place with the excuse that, no matter where you go, you can never get a _real_ Mexican-style chicken salad with mango and jalapeño peppers in a Mancunian restaurant. She wants to make it herself, following the special recipe a chef gave you during your first holiday together in Monterrey.

You’re not hungry at all, but agree to stay merely out of gratitude. Even though it’s hard to admit it, you could use some company tonight, as a distraction from all the negative thoughts of the day.

She tries to get you to relax, to make you feel at home, but things between you are not as easy as they used to be, and when things get more familiar you end up moving awkwardly around each other like two strangers on their first date.

When she offers you a Diet Coke, you blush and ask for a plain whisky instead. After the third glass, you’ve loosened up enough to take off your jacket and sit on the sofa while she rummages for the right ingredients in her tiny kitchen.

Looking around, you notice for the first time that her flat has been redecorated and many objects that used to be on display on the shelves and the mantlepiece have now disappeared. She has replaced them with several framed pictures of herself and her family, taken in different places and at different times of her life. You marvel at how beautiful she looks in every single one of them.

Right at the back, there’s a picture of the two of you together standing in front of the Coliseum, a simple snapshot taken sometime during your first holiday in Italy, at the beginning of your relationship. You pick it up and stare at the younger image of yourself, barely recognizing that smug, cocky grin as yours. Frowning slightly, you replace the picture face down on the shelf.

Wandering around the room to kill time, you spot the CD player and decide to take a look at the pile of disks lying beside it. You pick up a CD by the Stone Roses, recognising it as one of your old ones, and briefly ponder whether to ask Maya for permission to listen to a couple of songs. 

Turning around, you notice she’s been watching you closely from the kitchen all along, checking your reactions to the environment that used to be your second home and has now become like an alien planet.

You blush and look away without a word, but this time she’s determined to get something out of you, whether you like it or not. If you won’t be the one to break the ice, she’ll do it for you.

Grabbing the CD from your hands, Maya pops it into the player and drags you to the centre of the room. She delicately wraps her arms around your waist, and suddenly you feel as if they could not belong anywhere else. 

You accept the intimacy of that gesture, finally realising how much you’ve missed it. Clinging to this feeling and leaning into her warm body, you find yourself not wanting to let go. 

She smells familiar, like home. You get teary-eyed as you start to lose yourself in her, and all she wants to do is kiss your problems away and hold you until everything changes for the better. She needs to do it for herself as much as for you. 

As the song finishes, you lean in to kiss her briefly on the cheek, grateful for everything she’s doing. You’ve still got a long way to go before this simple gesture turns into something more substantial, but maybe, to a certain extent, deep down inside you still belong to each other.

It’s getting late, and you suddenly realise you must both be feeling quite hungry. She resumes cooking, but you no longer want to sit and wait. Besides, you notice she’s chopping up the jalapeño peppers all wrong, so you roll your eyes and decide to take over, as you used to do in the good old days. 

You discard the tie, roll up your sleeves and put on an apron, playing with the ingredients and mixing them easily. The kitchen is all yours now, and there’s nothing else to do for Maya but stand aside with a glass of wine and admire the master at work.

When you sit down to eat, you realise the warmth you feel inside is neither due to the whisky nor to the chili. You smile at each other, and this time the silence that ensues is not awkward at all.

***

While cutting some bread to go with your meal, you end up slicing one of your fingers pretty badly. Maya gets worried, but you don’t even complain. You laugh, instead. An honest, simple laugh.

As the pain creeps into your system and reaches your brain, you can’t help gritting your teeth, but it doesn’t matter, because you can _feel_ it.

Even while they are stitching you up at the hospital, you’re still grinning like a lunatic.

 

_Sam Tyler is ALIVE._


End file.
